Antebellum Tennessee: A State Divided

Antebellum Tennessee: A State Divided. . In the decades leading up to the bloody, four-year U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), the people and activities at The Old Mill embodied many of the conflicts of a divided nation., The farmers who relied on the mill and other Pigeon Forge businesses typically owned small farms, not large plantations. Their economic well-being depended more on family workers and local markets than on Northern factories, international trade, or slave labor., le 1861, less than 4 percent of eligible (white male) voters Sevier County voted to secede from the United States and Join the Confederate States of America. The remaining 96% (along with majorities from 28 other East Tennessee counties) voted to side with the North and maintain the Union., But many other people in Tennessee, and in the Tennessee legislature, had a different idea of Tennessee's future. On June 8, 1861, the Tennessee General Assembly voted to secede from the US, and join the Confederacy., Tennessee was the last Southern state to secede from the United States, and the first to rejoin the Union at war's end., The Sevier County census of 1850 showed that of the county's 7,074 residents, 6,536 were free white people of European descent, and 538 were of African ancestry held as slaves. The remaining 69 people were classified as "mulatto" (mixed race) or as free persons of color.